Dirt! The Moviehttp://www.dirtthemovie.org
Just another WordPress siteMon, 27 Apr 2015 22:39:47 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.3New Year, new products – Celebrate the International Year of Soils!http://www.dirtthemovie.org/new-year-new-products-celebrate-the-international-year-of-soils/
http://www.dirtthemovie.org/new-year-new-products-celebrate-the-international-year-of-soils/#commentsSat, 21 Feb 2015 02:02:23 +0000http://www.dirtthemovie.org/?p=428Continued]]>We have partnered with like-minded filmmakers and publishers to bring you the most relevant and Dirt!-worthy resources available. We will be adding more recommended books and DVDs on a regular basis, so be sure to stay connected by joining our mailing list, liking us on Facebook, following us on Twitter and Pinterest, and subscribing to us on YouTube!

Greetings from the Dirt Team and welcome to our new website. It’s hard to believe that it has almost been six years since we had our premiere at the Sundance Film Festival!

Since then Dirt! The Movie has screened on PBS as its Earth Day Special in 2010; has shown in numerous festivals and events in more than 14 countries around the world; has screened for a special soil commission for the European Union in Brussels and the European Soil and Land Alliance Convention in Germany; has found friends with such organizations as the Festival of Faiths (Sacred Soil: Foundation of Life, 2010) and Interfaith Power and Light (Sow a Cool Harvest, 2012) and even received a “Dirt! The Movie Day” proclamation from Mayor Gavin Newsom in San Francisco. These are just a selection of highlights as it would take pages to name all of our fantastic partners and alliances to properly credit their ongoing work and help to us. It has been a wild ride and we are so happy that Dirt! continues to make friends and reach people through festivals, word of mouth, and your grass roots community screenings!

So many of you have reached out to us and translated and subtitled the film in numerous languages in order to reach even more people with the message of Dirt! and how we can all do our part to preserve and rejuvenate this vital resource. We are so grateful for your collaboration and interest.

Some new and/or updated features to lookout for on the site are our redesigned store, our new streaming option, and our blog (which it looks like you have found!) With the new site and its outreach capabilities we hope to continue to spread the word and keep you all updated on what is coming next.

Thank You for your continued support and interest in our film and movement.

The Dirt Team

]]>http://www.dirtthemovie.org/welcome-to-our-new-site/feed/0Tree People honors Laurie Benensonhttp://www.dirtthemovie.org/tree-people-honors-laurie-benenson/
http://www.dirtthemovie.org/tree-people-honors-laurie-benenson/#commentsMon, 17 Nov 2014 01:34:41 +0000http://dirtthemovie.wpengine.com/?p=273Continued]]>The weekend of September 29th saw the the annual Tree People gathering take place under a full Harvest Moon in Beverly Hills, California.

Tree People celebrated their 40th Anniversary in late 2013, and was founded by Andy Lipkis, who appears in Dirt! The Movie. The organization is committed to providing a sustainable future for the greater Los Angeles area, and to:

“…inspire, engage and support people to take personal responsibility for the urban environment, making it healthy, fun, safe and sustainable – and to share the process as a model for the world.”

The event on September 29th hosted the presentation of the annual Evergreen Award, which this year was bestowed upon Laurie Benenson for her continued effort and support of sustainable projects in the Los Angeles area. Laurie Benenson is spouse to Bill Benenson, who directed Dirt! The Movie along with Gene Rosow.

Andy Lipkis and Los Angeles Mayor Thomas Bradley (1980)

The event also saw the creation of the Andy Lipkis and Laurie Benenson fund by an anonymous donor who contributed 1 million ($1,000,000) towards the causes and efforts that Tree People represents through its ongoing work.

“This is a tremendous validation of the value of our work over the last 40 years,” said Lipkis. “It is a powerful endorsement of our commitment to accelerate making Los Angeles a climate resilient city.”

The event raised hundred of thousands for Tree People and their cause, and included honorees such as the Main Street Elementary School and Dr. Jonathan Fielding. You can learn more about Tree People and the amazing work they do by visiting their website, or by stopping by their Facebook and Twitter.

The return of the Dustbowl. It has been a long time coming, but never unexpected. Recent years have set records in terms of heat (the last 6 months have been the hottest in history), and America’s breadbasket has felt the affects twofold. Many attribute this to our current agricultural system, which promotes monoculture, or the production of one crop. This means that in times of severe drought or disease, our crops are far more susceptible to the threat due to their lack of diversity.

This is not the first time we have seen a Dustbowl. Between 1932 and 1940, the Midwest experienced a drought that killed most of the wheat crop in the region, leading to hundreds of thousands of acres of nothing but dust and wind. As the great Spanish philosopher George Santayana once wrote:

“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Watch an excerpt from Dirt! The Movie below about the original dustbowl, and check out this national geographic article to see how it is currently making a comeback.

Ah, Fall is in full swing. The leaves are falling, the scent of autumn lingers in the air, and Winter is just around the corner.

Celebrate the most colorful season of the year by hosting a screening of Dirt! The Movie in your community – at your local library, arboretum, community center, church or maybe even graveyard!

From now thru January 3rd, 2015 we are offering 20% your entire order when you use the code LOVEDIRT20 at checkout.

Further, giving the gift of Dirt! The Movie has never been easier. Our Deluxe Edition is now available year round, perfect for birthdays and the swiftly approaching holiday season. Check out our new shop to see all of your options, and feel free to let us know if there’s something you want that we don’t have.

After a grueling campaign to save a 110 acre area of land in Southern Oregon from devastating clear-cutting practices, Speak for the Trees Oregon, a non-profit headed by Matt Ramsey and wife Lydia Doleman, finally reached an agreement with the encroaching logging company to end the cutting that was indefinitely ruining both the trees and wildlife in the surrounding area.

You can view their eye-opening campaign video and heartwarming followup video below (both created by Dean Hawn) that document the issue as well as the success story. The final victory was made possible by the continual support of the grassroots community over several years, and many generous donations that went towards purchasing the land so that it would be safe forever.

“…come back here in 20 years, we will all stand here again and see what it looks like and know that it’s safe from the axe, and thats kind of cool.”

~ Matt Ramsey, Founder of Speak for the Trees Oregon

If you are in the area, make sure you come out for the next Speak for the Trees hosted event on October 24th @ 7 PM.

“I will be a hummingbird. I will do the best I can.” – Wangari Maathai, Dirt! The Movie

Have a Hummingbird New Year!

]]>http://www.dirtthemovie.org/hummingbird-new-year-2014/feed/0TED – Pam Warhurst: How we can eat our landscapeshttp://www.dirtthemovie.org/ted-pam-warhurst-how-we-can-eat-our-landscapes/
http://www.dirtthemovie.org/ted-pam-warhurst-how-we-can-eat-our-landscapes/#commentsThu, 04 Apr 2013 21:32:47 +0000http://dirtthemovie.wpengine.com/?p=312Continued]]>What should a community do with its unused land? Plant food, of course. With energy and humor, Pam Warhurst tells at the TEDSalon the story of how she and a growing team of volunteers came together to turn plots of unused land into communal vegetable gardens, and to change the narrative of food in their community.
]]>http://www.dirtthemovie.org/ted-pam-warhurst-how-we-can-eat-our-landscapes/feed/0Prison Garden Focushttp://www.dirtthemovie.org/prison-garden-focus/
http://www.dirtthemovie.org/prison-garden-focus/#commentsThu, 14 Jun 2012 12:00:57 +0000http://dirtthemovie.wpengine.com/?p=311Continued]]>A prison garden provides inmate work, produces better food for the institution, teaches work skills, and provides an achievement opportunity for inmates. In Dirt! The Movie we introduced you to the Rikers Island prison garden program, The Greenhouse Project. Since then, we have received several emails from viewers asking us for more information about prison gardens, so we’ll be presenting information from time to time highlighting various prison garden programs and resources.

One of the organizations we found is The Garden Project. This program gives ex-prisoners who have been released a place to continue working on a farm, similar to New York’s Green Team that was also featured in Dirt! The Garden Project is based on the success of The Horticulture Program at the San Francisco County Jail.

For a bird’s eye view of prison gardens around the country, including The Garden Project and The Greenhouse Project, please check out this excellent blog post by Rachel Cernansky. She gives a great overview of several prison garden programs, and describes how food banks benefit from them.

You can find more information about prison and therapeutic gardens at Therapeutic Landscapes Network. The Therapeutic Landscapes Network is a knowledge base and gathering space about healing gardens, restorative landscapes, and other green spaces that promote health and well-being.

And read Dirt! The Movie participant, James Jiler‘s book, Doing Time in the Garden: Life Lessons through Prison Horticulture
Publisher’s book description:
In his book, Doing Time in the Garden, James Jiler combines an engaging personal account of running a highly successful horticultural vocation program at the largest jail complex in the United States with a practical guide to starting and managing prison and re-entry gardening programs.

The Greenhouse Project gives horticultural job-training to male and female inmates at New York City’s Rikers Island jail system. After release, ex-offenders can intern with the GreenTeam, which provides landscaping and gardening services to community groups and institutions throughout New York State.

Jiler’s humor and heartfelt stories about prison community and clear explanations of what works broaden this book’s appeal to all social activists, especially those involved with at-risk populations.